Federal appeals court stays injunction on Microsoft Word sales

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] on Thursday granted [order, PDF] a request by Microsoft Corporation [corporate website] to stay an injunction [text, PDF] that would have prevented the company from selling its popular word processing program Microsoft Word. The court ruled in a brief per curiam opinion that Microsoft had met its burden to stay the injunction. Microsoft had filed the emergency motion [text, PDF] for a stay of injunction on August 18, arguing that if the injunction were upheld, distributors of Microsoft products would be irreparably harmed. Microsoft did not release an official statement following the ruling, but a spokesperson did express satisfaction [Bloomberg report] with the result. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Microsoft's appeal on September 23.

Microsoft filed its motion for an emergency stay less than one week after the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued the injunction [JURIST report]. The court held that Microsoft infringed a patent for XML coding held by Canadian company i4i [corporate website], which was the latest legal challenge for Microsoft. In June, a South Korean court ruled that Microsoft violated anti-trust laws [JURIST report] by packaging software with its Windows operating system. In late February, Google sought to join anti-trust litigation [JURIST report] against Microsoft in the EU, arguing that by packaging the Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system, Microsoft is stifling competition in the web browser market.

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